What do you feed your older vegan baby? (and what about nuts?)

[sky_and_lavender]

My 10 month old until now has been been eating a lot of banana and other fruits, avocado, sweet potato, cooked veggies, lentils and brown rice. More recently she's eating more quinoa, pasta, beans and flax and other oil. She's still going strong with bf'ing (thank goodness) but suddenly is much more interested in food! She will eat almost anything, and has tastes of our foods when interested. I don't make too many recipes, I just have cooked beans and other stuff in the fridge and offer an assortment when she seems hungry after nursing.

We haven't introduced soy or nuts (including coconut) or seeds yet. (Actually, she has eaten tahini in hummos with no ill effect.) Nuts and seeds are a big part of my diet, and soy and seitan are also important (1-3x/week, sometimes more if I feel the need) in my diet. When would you introduce these? Both of our families have histories of asthma and environmental allergies, but not nut allergies.

Thanks for any input!

[crunchy_mommy]

We did not hold off on introducing any foods -- we do not have a history of food allergies. Well, I take that back, I've just recently become allergic to a few things so I don't give DS those just to be safe (but I suspect my issue is more of an immune system problem not straight allergies). For the most part, DS (17 mos) has always just eaten whatever we're eating. At that age loved hummus, chili, curried veggies, guacamole, whole wheat spaghetti, fruits, etc... actually those are still his favorite foods, though he will eat just about anything! He LOVES spicy foods & will eat weird things like a ww hamburger bun soaked in tabasco sauce...

With nuts/seeds I usually stick to thinly spread nut butters or grind them into smoothies... I worry about choking. I don't think coconut is a real nut... We use coconut milk in a lot of our cooking & baking & the extra fat is supposed to be really good for babies/toddlers! Anyway so as far as allergies I don't ascribe to the 'hold off to a certain age' thing so maybe someone else can answer that -- I just find the information too conflicted anyway

[maciascl]

Mine were barely eating at that age but I would think that cubes of tofu would be ok. I'd probably stick to the idea of giveing what you eat.

At this point even though she seems more interested in food, breastmilk should be about 95% of her intake & food should be more for experimentation. Think of it as desert. It sounds like you are pretty much doing that & just looking for more options, so I guess what I am saying is don't stress over it 10 months is still really young.

[red and lulu]

We just give dd what we're eating, though we stuck w/ just fruits and veggies until maybe 9 mo, then introduced grains and beans, then tofu, tempeh, bread, and peanut butter. She's almost 1 and while she still nurses round the clock she has a very adventurous palate. she loves greens, spicy food, homemade veggie burgers, guacamole, and beans of any kind, served any way.

I don't plan on giving her seitan, and I try to limit her wheat consumption b/c I have a sensitivity. I just don't think a lot of gluten is good for anyone.

[featherstory]

We didn't give our daughter nuts/seeds until well after 1 year. We were high raw, until we started running a cooked vegan restaurant... still she didn't eat much solid foods, they were mostly for snacking for her until she was over 1 year. When we gave her nuts & seeds she really didn't like them much, it was pretty rare. They can't really chew them very well, so that indicates to me, they don't really need that. Around the age of two she was eating more seeds/nuts, but we have severely lowered our nut/seed intake.

She has been pretty sensitive to the things she eats, though I would not say allergic, and she has been very intuitive and picking things that are good for her, though she will try almost anything, she wasn't really like that at first.

The first things she ate were avocados, papayas, cucumbers, and other fruit, around the age of your daughter.

When we started at the restaurant, some of the people started giving her the soy we made, we gave her quinoa, rice, etc. Coconut was introduced pretty early though, we drank young coconut juice, it wasn't until she was almost 2 that she had some of the jelly though. Some oil came in from the greens and other things we made, and coconut milk... but personally we tried to keep it really simple still, mostly due to her cues... mostly, she preferred her regular foods, and would try the other things, after awhile, one of those things might have also became a regular. But we really tried to keep really complicated to digest, allergenic foods low, as well as salts and oils. We also let her transition to new foods really slowly and introduce new things slowly, it really took her about 2 years to really become a pretty regular eater, and still we eat mostly raw fruits & vegetables and some cooked grains or vegetables. We no longer do oils, soy, or seasonings, (except on desperate pre-made occasions) and nuts and seeds are pretty rare.

To me, seeds are preferable to nuts for her, and sesame seeds and sunflower seeds seem a lot easier to digest and less-allergen likely than pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, etc. I'm also interested in trying hemp seeds, but currently she very occasionally has sunflower seeds. We only do nuts when they are fresh, raw and in season. It seems that a lot of allergies from these products come from the molds that grow in them, due to the nuts being treated and stored for long periods of time, in otherwords, not being fresh and basically being rancid.

[Koalamom]

Great thread! My ds is almost 1 and has been wanting more solids lately and not wanting to nurse hardly. He just wants real food. He loves steamed brocolli, green beans, potatoes, beans especially refried beans. I gave almond butterto him the other day and he did well. When he was 10 months, I don't think he was ready. Just his turning 1 soon, there is a change in him.

[Koalamom]

Oh but ds has had stuff with chia seeds and flax oil for a while. And he has eaten GF muffins which contained the ocasional walnuts.

[pinksprklybarefoot]

We just give the baby whatever we are eating, as long as it isn't a choking hazard. We don't actually feed him, though - we just let him experiment with it. He had peanut butter at around six months.

[katroshka]

I fed my first vegan baby pretty much like everyone else has been saying, with the addition of straight up tahini-- I know, it seems weird and since it's been like 8 years I can't remember how it got started-- she loved to just eat it out of a small measuring cup, I would give her a TBSP or two a day and she was crazy about it. Pretty messy, but tahini is good for you, so what the heck? My second didn't want anything but breastmilk for over a year, and then discovered a tub of hummus at a party, and before I even noticed had eaten most of the container. Both my kids loved hummus, which I usually made at home for them.

[sky_and_lavender]

Thanks to all of your for your thoughts on this subject! I feel like it will probably be fine to introduce nut and seed butters, but I'm not in a rush. Coconut sounds like a good idea, though, so I'm going to think about that! For now our baby is getting lots of uncooked fruits, cooked veggies, beans, lentils, brown rice, oats and quinoa, and flax oil mixed in sometimes, as well as occasional foods from our favorite Arabic restaurants. We're going by the kellymom guidelines, and mostly CLW, with an eye toward 25% solid food at 1 year (so we're offering food a few times a day now, and being more generous when she asks). Baby's developing and growing happily so far!